Sunshine and volcanoes

The glorious weather continues...

We've been mostly living outdoors, with lots of water play and a barbecue. A bucket of water and a paintbrush has been popular for 'painting' the shed and of course the obligatory sandpit and paddling pool.

I've been wanting to do the volcano experiment for months, but as Harlan has shown a recent interest in dinosaurs (and playing Mario levels with lava that burns Mario's bottom!) I thought it might be a good time to give it a try. We used half an empty squash bottle as the centre of the volcano and built up saltdough (salt, flour, water) around it to form the volcano shape. Ideally we would have let the saltdough dry in the sun but that takes too long so we accepted the volcano would disintegrate and got on with the messy fun. Harlan poured bicarbonate of soda into the plastic bottle and put red food dye in to make our lava the right colour. He then poured in vinegar (ours was malt vinegar but any type would work, whatever you happen to have in the cupboard) and was delighted when foamy 'lava' poured out of the volcano. We repeated it until we ran out of ingredients and I am under strict instructions to buy more so we can do it again. We might make a papier mache volcano next time I think and add dinosaurs around the base, as he thought it was great to pretend to be a dinosaur running away from the lava so he didn't melt.

I really recommend this experiment as it uses ingredients you probably have in your kitchen cupboard or are cheap to buy and it was a lot of fun.

Harlan ended the afternoon by making his own tea, poking linguini through hot dog sausages. It's something I saw on Pinterest a while back and never got round to doing. Under supervision, he prepared it all, watched it cook, talked about how the spaghetti was changing when it cooked, decide when it was done and scoop it out onto his plate with a slotted spoon. Job well done!

Photo catch up of the last week or so

 

 We spent a wonderful day at Tutbury Castle, where they had men in full armour battling with swords, a medieval style camp set up, archery displays and birds of prey. We took a picnic and spent the day there in glorious sunshine, with a rather excited small boy.

 

 

As a result, we have been having regular sword fights, and all playground structures have become Harlan's castles to defend. We are heading to the local library tomorrow to find some books about knights and castles, and I have secretly bought a rather bargainous set of toy knights and castle which should be ready for him by next week.

Aside from out castle adventures, we are having a rather stressful time as we have been given notice on our house. Always a risk of a rental property, but we have been here 3 1/2 years and will be sad to move. The atmosphere has definitely been picked up on by the smallest member of the family, who has been a bit unreliable with his toileting and more shouty then usual. I am trying to make an effort to talk about the positives, perhaps a bigger garden... and I will have a look at the library and on Amazon for books about moving house.

To keep ourselves busy and to make the most of the glorious sunshine we have been making regular visits to the parks in our local area - one in particular, Brampton Park, has a large sandpit with a water pump. Whilst there today we saw some obviously school aged children, at the park during school hours. I bit the bullet, approached the mothers and asked if they were home educated. Turns out they are and we know a few of the same people, although we had never met before. They go to a Christian H.E. group locally, but said they only focus on faith at Easter and Christmas, and it is open to people of all or no religion. I gave one lady my email address and she has promised to get in touch with details of the group. Her children were a great example of H.E. - confident, polite, self assured. Hopefully that chance meeting will mean we can meet even more local families.